Indian actor and producer, Rana Daggubati, created a huge wave when he came on screen in the role of Bhallaladeva, the antagonist of the Baahubali franchise. Post the two films, he has shred every layer of the character and is back to playing versatile roles in different languages.
Rana will be next seen with his paternal uncle, Venkatesh, in an upcoming Indian action crime drama series on Netflix, created and directed by Karan Anshuman and Suparn Verma. “We always wanted to do something together. I knew right from the time I was an actor that when I get reasonably good, I’ll at some point get to work with him. We were very conscious, we didn’t want to do anything that was standard, which happens with many people in the family. When I said yes to doing this show, the minute he heard it, he asked who is playing this role, I want to play it. It came from him and it was very new for him and me too. In the teaser of the show, you can see that we are father and son that don’t like each other very much. As much as it says, ‘Rana Naidu’ in the show, it is very much he that is the real hero.
Speaking about his bond with his uncle off screen, he says, “He is never like an uncle. He is always like an older brother. He is ageless and I don’t look young. Somewhere in that combination, we always became more like siblings than uncle and nephew.”
Rana made his Hindi film debut with ‘Dum Maaro Dum’, where he played the character of DJ Joaquim ‘Joki’ Fernandes. Though he had several trips to Goa post the shooting, he still hopes to come here more often. “This is by far the best place I like to shoot. If I was able to shoot all my films in Goa, I would come here only. That time also I was so young, the film released in 2011, almost 12 years. It was three months shooting on the beaches in Goa, as I played a musician. I really enjoyed the whole stay that I didn’t even go back home, even though there was a break,” explains Rana.
He has been shooting in Goa but he is still looking for a longer role that features Goa prominently. “There always has been part and parcel of shoots in Goa but I feel because I did ‘Dum Maaro Dum’ and there was such a flavour of Goa that we took into that film. If there is not that much or more, I don’t tend to like it and I keep saying that, that is not Goa, Goa has a lot more than that. There is one work in development that is just come a couple to weeks ago, that had an interesting world of Goa. More has to be made because it is such a new culture from the rest of India,” he adds.
Soaking in the energy of the life in Goa, Rana feels that he misses that vibe on the screen, “I come here all the time. I miss it on screen as I feel there are so many more stories that has so much culture and colour which is unlike any part of India. I am hoping more people can do these movies in Goa,” he says.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Rana did the voice dubbing of the character of Thanos for the Telugu film for ‘Avengers Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’. What character would he love to play if he was offered on by the Marvel Studios? “I would like to play Thanos in some form but I guess that’s gone so I was only the voice artist of it. These are all fun things. I got into VFX because I loved the movie ‘Star Wars’. I liked Darth Vader and I thought, this is what I should be doing for the rest of my life. These things always excite us and engage is in every form. I would love to play any character that is big and powerful and has to take down a bunch of Avengers, I would like to do that. In those big films, the antagonists are always more fun characters. You’ll like Joker more than Batman and Darth Vader more than Luke Skywalker,” shares Rana with excitement.
Rana’s visual effects company, Spirit Media P Limited, specialises in animation and VFX, and has produced special effects for over 70 films. How long will India take to come at par with Hollywood films? “I don’t think too far. Once it is standardised, we can do a volume like nobody else. If you meet an actor who is my contemporary in Hollywood, he will have less than ten percent of what I have done, in terms of my life. Big stalwarts might have done 30-40 films that is a big thing. The same way, a great music composer would have done ten great films in his career. In India, a composer would do a 1000 films in his career. We get to volume very fast. Now is the time, post Baahubali and all these movies, that we are able to think and create big. As a story telling land, India comes from scale story telling. The Ramayana and Mahabharata are big stories, they are not stories that happened in small rooms. Scale is an essential part of us, now we just know how to make it. The B & E era did it, and we just started making it again. I’ll give it 3-5 years and you’ll see a large insurgence of the way we make films which will be much bigger,” says Rana optimistically.
